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This story originally aired on September 2, 2017. There is an unassuming, boxy building on the corner of Martin Luther King Junior Way and South 17th Street in Tacoma. This is the home Prince Hall Masonic Temple of the Freemasons. The organization is a worldwide fraternity that’s been around for hundreds of years. It’s known for its secret symbols and rituals. Prince Hall is a traditionally African American branch of freemasonry named after a man from the 1700’s who had to personally ask the

This show originally aired on June 3, 2017. This week on Sound Effect , we tell stories from amongst the trees. Theater In The Woods The Kitsap Forest Theater is one of the oldest outdoor theaters in the country. Tucked in the woods outside of Bremerton, performances have been held here every single year for 93 years, except for a couple of years during World War II.

This story originally aired on June 3, 2017. Kitsap Forest Theater is a natural outdoor amphitheater just outside of Bremerton, Wash. It's been run by the Mountaineers for 93 years, and sits on a 640-acre forest preserve. 100 years ago it was all rhododendrons. That was the initial attraction to the area. Some of the people who are Mountaineers began to come and stay every year and they began to do shows, performances and concerts, and eventually that developed into an annual theatrical

This story originally aired on June 3, 2017. At the edges of the things we know, there are “the woods.” And so often, we find ourselves there, feeling our way, sometimes blindly, through undefined landscapes. There’s something jarring, yet liberating, about the moment when you realize that so many of the people around you are doing the same. Parents, politicians, career “experts” — all, on some level, blazing an uncertain path through uncharted territory. Nigel Jaquiss is a Pulitzer Prize

This story originally aired on June 3, 2017. David Schumer felt like the country was falling apart. Nixon had resigned, Carter was hapless and disco was everywhere he turned. “We thought the only sane thing to do would be to move to a rural area, buy 30 acres of land, build a house and grow our own food,” he remembers. He moved from the Detroit suburbs to rural Arkansas, deep in the Ozark Mountains, to the community of Chimes. David tells Sound Effect about one of his favorite nights of his life

This story originally aired on June 3, 2017. In 2003, a group of four friends from various points of the country hit the trail for a bachelor party backpacking trip in the North Cascades. George Wing was the man who was getting married. They brought all of the usual necessities for such an outing: tents, food, a first-aid kit. But George’s longtime childhood friend and master prankster, Kermit, decided to shake things up. “We set up our first camp and I hear music and there’s this female leg

This week on Sound Effect, we share stories of fish out of water -- people who find themselves in places they're not sure they belong in. We start by talking to writer Rosette Royale, who after beginning an unlikely friendship , decided to plunge right into a place that always terrified him. We hear from former WSU history professor Sue Armitage about how one of Seattle’s founding fathers recruited women to come to Seattle from the East Coast. Then, a story from a woman who felt like an outsider

Olympic National Park, with its temperate rainforests and stunning views, exerts a natural pull on many Pacific Northwesterners. But it repelled Seattle writer Rosette Royale. To Royale, the park seemed like a damp, mucky, inhospitable place. "I couldn't figure out why anyone would want to haul a 50-pound pack into the wilderness and camp there for days," he said. "It didn't make sense." Then he met Bryant Carlin. Carlin was a vendor for Real Change, the Seattle weekly sold on the street by

Thanksgiving dinner at the house where Christina Hayes grew up, in the Tri Cities in Eastern Washington, has all the normal things. Her parents, who met in bible college, are there, along with extended family. There’s turkey and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie: By all appearances they are a completely typical American family holiday. “We’re playing, we’re laughing, we’re joking, we’re prepping food. We are like the Hallmark family,” Hayes said. But Christina, who lives in Seattle, brought along

“Here Come The Brides” was a short-lived television show from the late 1960s. In the show, 1860s Seattle is faced with losing its lumberjacks to other cities because Seattle doesn’t have enough women, until they import a bunch of marriageable ladies from the East Coast, and hilarity ensues. Kind of an outlandish premise, right? Except that it really happened. Asa Mercer was president of the University of Washington (at the time they had exactly one student), and he took it on himself find wives